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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24063784">athena and ares</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecon/pseuds/queenofthecon'>queenofthecon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst for sure, F/M, idk what this is to be honest, poetry? rambling? who knows</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:02:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,427</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24063784</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecon/pseuds/queenofthecon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He can’t live in her world with dirt under his nails and skin damp from sweat. She is Athena, with armour gold and he is Ares, quaking.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Brad Leone &amp; Claire Saffitz, Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>athena and ares</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So this is me trying to get out of a creative rut, try something different and more stream of consciousness than edited and perfected to death. I don't know if this is going to be to absolutely everyone's taste but I have the need now and again to write this kind of fic and it helps jostle feelings awake. </p><p>Please let me know what you think, how you are, what you're doing to cope right now. Just reach out to people here because we're a tiny fandom with a lot of love and creativity to share.</p><p>Remember this is fictional and all yearnings put henceforth are fictional also. Don't share or press or badger anyone depicted therein. No harm is ever intended.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>2013</em>
</p><p>He sees her like this: a smile too bright, one that tries to hide the anxiety in her handshake and fails, pale, pale skin and softness that tricks you into pity when she whines. It won’t work because it <em>can’t </em>– he is frenetic energy, chaos under messy hair and rough skin, pulling his jokes and his grins because she doesn’t laugh at them yet. But he is gone, gone, gone.</p><p>She is dark, glossy eyes, ones that tug and prick and pull and could lure sailors like him to a short death as she licks her lips and devours. He keeps a polite distance but still those eyes start to crinkle at his jokes and his bullshit, and the coldness of ambition warms and melts as they do. She is curves and silk and butter on his lips that lingers until it melts.</p><p>She devours slowly – eats him drip by drip.</p><p>They are guarded, both of them, pushing at the tether just a little longer. He’s not enough: can’t live in her world with dirt under his nails and skin damp from sweat. She is Athena, with armour gold and he is Ares, quaking.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>2015</em>
</p><p>She sees him like this: heat and noise holding back the sweetness deep inside that threatens to overwhelm her at her lowest. He’s the deep forest she played in as a child with bare feet, staring up at gnarled trees and running her fingers over the rough bark, longing to climb to the highest just to see if she was strong enough, because the view alone wasn’t her reward.</p><p>There are smiles and stolen glances, the space between them diminishing every day, side by side. She teaches, she listens and learns too, and soaks up all she can. He is broad shoulders and thick arms and softness, a strength that helps her climb the tree in bare feet, a steady rock there to catch her when her footing slides. She falls too easy, over and over again every day, but he is there, silent, and alive and distant too.</p><p>He is a rose of thorns that make her bleed for the sweet smell of the petals inside. She wants and dreams of the next scent, over and over again.</p><p>They fall into easy step with each other. They find a line and a boundary and a world they both live in where nothing exists outside. It’s dangerous, she knows, but she falls and climbs and falls until she is exhausted by the weight of the idea of <em>them</em>. She longs to live in the forest and lose herself inside.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>2017</em>
</p><p>He sees her like this always, as bright and brilliant as sunsets and the spring. He pokes and prods and pulls at her, takes her armour down and sees the scared girl inside, the one afraid of failing, and makes her take a leap holding his hand. She’s waving a red flag at him, daring him to charge and come for her but there are cameras in his face. He sees it then. He catches the stares and the crack in his voice, the subtleties become unsubtle and he wants to hide away from them. The truth is harder than the lie he tells himself. She’s a friend and nothing more. He <em>wants</em> more, he thinks, he wants more than the word he can’t bring himself to say.</p><p>The road they’ve travelled has been together and this one will be together too – a road that catches lightning inside a bottle, a path of laughter and learning. They take the leap into a mad world holding each other’s hand.</p><p>Except he knows before it even happens. She shines brighter than him, her lightning breaks the bottle, shatters it into sand while he makes the best of his failures as much as he can. He is still rough hands and she is still devouring him with dark, glossy eyes and a smile on her lips she keeps aside only for him.</p><p>They aren’t each other’s, but he is hers and her lightning will scar him in the end.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>2018</em>
</p><p>The absence of him itches at her more than anything when she leaves. It’s like leaving home, scared and young again, determined to prove herself as more than a silver spoon and a pretty face, as more than a gimmick on an internet show. But she misses him – home – more and more and the space makes her pause. It doesn’t last long, but she had <em>tried</em> so hard, fought for so long that this place, that these people were her heart, her centre, her soul. She walks in and he’s there, chaos and noise and her centre solidified. This is it: this is where she needs to be.</p><p>She sees him like this: childish where she is staid, loose and free where she is stuck in the ground. It shouldn’t work but it does and her heart skips when he lays across her countertop and pokes and prods and pulls at her like he always has. He is joy and invention and she soaks in all he has to give.</p><p>But it changes. His rose blooms and she’s not there to smell the sweetness opening up to the world around him. He travels where she stands still, though she longs to follow and learn and laugh like they used to do, before the cameras and the fear of being seen, of being known.</p><p>She comes back and he’s gone again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>2019</em>
</p><p>He sees her like this: his desperate desire, the thread between them pulling tight until breaking point before it loosens, safe from breaking and solid once more. They come to the edge between whiskey and wine again and again, closer and further apart. She touches light now and taps his arms because they are a spark away from burning like a powder keg, and she likes the taste in her mouth of playing at the edge of the rules. She smiles brighter and teases and lures to devour what is left of him gleefully and he can only look longingly before she is gone again.</p><p>There’s a need in him to own her, to punish her for making him want, to pull the noises he feels from her mouth and swallow them up before anyone hears. The more she’s not there, the bigger it grows. He possesses her, he knows now, the tether is at both ends and he devours her as much as she does him.</p><p>His fingers itch and he has to keep going, keep moving, stay away from the girl that burns too bright. She’s a goddess, feared more without her armour because she doesn’t feel the wounds.</p><p>The desire goes deep, deep, deep and she is curves and silk between his fingers still.</p><p>He dreams of tasting her, of signing his name across her breast and running his fingers through her hair, of her laughter and her scorn in equal measure. He’s been hers from the beginning and knows now that no distance will ever make him forget it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>2020</em>
</p><p>They only see each other like this: as pixels on a screen, as blurs of faces neither can forget, burned into memories. They see each other in dreams and desires, in the dark and in the spaces nobody else can have. It won’t end, the longing, the plans in ruins and the world determined to keep them apart.</p><p>The space between them goes on and diminishes too. The world changes, but <em>they</em> can’t.</p><p>The space between them ends, as all things do.</p><p>He sees her first, waits by the door so he can worship at her feet as she walks in, eyes ready to search but sees him there, drained and devoured by the need for her. His arms open wordlessly and pull her tight, their strength around her shoulders making her whole. He is her armour and her ground, and she is his lure, his tether to home that won’t be cut. She feels him strong around her, protective, relief flooding through her blood as she finally breathes the smell of roses. He kisses the top of her hair and tastes the gold and sunlight.</p><p>Her forehead presses to his chest and she bathes in him until she drowns. There’s time now, words unspoken and known all the same, time for his fingers to thread through her hair, for her smile and desire to settle, pressed tight to his chest where the light can’t reach.</p><p>They become whole, and more besides and they can only love, love, love.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you have a good day. Remember, there is an end and a light there too.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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